{"id":358834,"date":"2022-05-27T09:03:32","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T07:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/?p=358834"},"modified":"2022-08-10T22:26:18","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T20:26:18","slug":"educating-in-the-2020s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/education\/educating-in-the-2020s\/","title":{"rendered":"Parenting and educating in the 2020s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Becoming a mom, amidst working with a <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">team of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomorrowtodayglobal.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">futurists<\/a><\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, always had the potential to cause some sort of conundrum to our parenting journey and of course educating in the 2020s. I mean, when robots, warnings of disruption, and the future of work overlap with parenting, extramurals, Biff and Chip, and trying to figure out what\u2019s best for our kids in this fast paced world &#8211; well, I guess it\u2019s understandable that all these things combined led this Mom and Dad to:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> question childhood in the 2020s.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">question what learning means for our kids, and to <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">question what we can actively do to equip our kids for their future &#8211; in a way that honours who they are, how they learn, while helping them pursue what makes them happy.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Futurists or not, it\u2019s not difficult to see the world changing so rapidly, yet somehow we still ignore the fact that how and what our kids learn is in desperate need of a serious makeover.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Having the courage to step away from the system: educating in the 2020s<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2020, with many of these thoughts and questions already on the surface, Covid and hard lockdown colliding with a breast cancer diagnosis allowed our family to step back from all that we knew around educating our kids. We were given a chance to choose a different path to parenting and educating in the 2020s<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A path that, right now, allows us to focus on helping them create a real love for learning.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>A path that encourages our kids to learn how to be self-directed,<\/li>\n<li>one that has an emphasis on EQ, and<\/li>\n<li>one that pushes us to expose them to a variety of ideas and thinking. (While also stretching us as parents to have the confidence to stay on this path, trusting our decision as well as the process that lets this journey unfold and uncover the treasures along the way!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Keeping it real<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now before you think it\u2019s all unicorn sparkles and rainbows and parents who have it all under control\u2026 It\u2019s not\u2026 We have days where it\u2019s chaos, and many days have been spent googling every curriculum under the sun, while doubting our decision. Days where the kids spend too many hours playing Roblox or Minecraft. Days where sending them to school for the morning seems like heaven.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But we are privileged with resources, being able to work from home with flexible hours, and having access to learning guides, a tutor, and a curated curriculum and a growing community that we lean on and learn from. A community which means we don\u2019t have to do this on our own, and who helps us trust the process that we\u2019ve chosen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-358836\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Jude-1024x769.jpeg\" alt=\"judes family\" width=\"800\" height=\"601\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Jude-1024x769.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Jude-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Jude-768x577.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Jude.jpeg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>What our days look like (mostly).<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The days start late for the kids &#8211; they sleep until they wake up naturally and by 9 or 9.30am they\u2019re ready for their day, having had breakfast, brushed their teeth, made their beds, and are hopefully dressed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My eldest participates in an international, online learning hub called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.learnlife.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LearnLife<\/a> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0where she gets to engage with kids from around the world on a daily basis, and has access to learning guides and frameworks that help her with her self-directed projects. Currently she\u2019s really into baking, cooking, and singing and is also trying her hand at some novel writing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My 9 year old prefers working one-on-one with a tutor and so they spend an hour every day doing some maths, reading, science and whatever else he\u2019s fascinated with. For the rest of the day he spends time building things, researching stuff, riding his bike, playing with friends in the afternoon as well as his extra murals.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a working mom I try to get 3 or 4 hours work in before 9:30 so that I can then spend some time with them at the beginning of their \u2018working\u2019 day, helping them with some projects or research or helping them make sure they have what they need to crack on with their day. (That doesnt always work, especially with winter making getting up early tough!). I normally also try and work from a coffee shop later in the day again for 2 hours for some more focused work and a change of scenery before I turn into taxi driver in the afternoon getting the kids to their extra murals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Why wait until they\u2019re 18<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of our guiding principles for our parenting journey came from advice that a colleague of mine gave me a week before our daughter was born\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His advice suggested that we raise our kids with the knowledge that we were ultimately preparing them to leave us\u2026 Looking back I guess that\u2019s pretty wild advice to\u00a0 receive the week before you\u2019re about to hold your newborn, but honestly &#8211; it\u2019s been one of the most liberating pieces of advice that\u2019s stuck with me since the day we received it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s given me permission to let go a little, to make it easier to say yes to the kids spending glorious weeks away with Grandparents and family, and more recently, the courage to step away from traditional schooling and follow a path\u00a0 that we believe is more intentional about preparing them for their future\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why wait until they\u2019re 18 to have a gap year to \u2018find themselves\u2019. Why wait until they leave school before we encourage them to actively and wholeheartedly follow their passions. Why wait for them to rediscover the joy of learning when they\u2019re \u2018finally\u2019 allowed to learn about topics that really interest them, rather than a curriculum that prescribes what they \u2018need to know\u2019. Why wait for an antiquated education system to catch up to our ever changing world. Why be nervous of change, when change is one of the only constants they\u2019ll know.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And yes\u2026 it does sometimes feel like one massive experiment, with the stakes being crazy high, because of \u2018who\u2019 we are experimenting with. But time after time, my response to this fear that can creep into my mind is that the risk of <\/span><b>not<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> experimenting ends up feeling far greater, and so we continue down this road less traveled, adventuring into the future.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Note: If you enjoyed this article, and would like to stay updated with more, you can:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Subscribe to our free weekly Jozikids\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/member-registration\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">newsletter<\/a>\u00a0 for parents in Gauteng<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Like us on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jozikids.co.za\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">facebook<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Follow us on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/instagram.com\/jozikids?igshid=1n8cwedrewul\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">instagram<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Becoming a mom, amidst working with a team of futurists , always had the potential to cause some sort of conundrum to our parenting journey and of course educating in the 2020s. I mean, when robots, warnings of disruption, and the future of work overlap with parenting, extramurals, Biff and Chip, and trying to figure [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":359574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}